On tap at Dinkelspiel: Big Band jazz and Glass premiere

Big Band jazz and a symphony
premiere will be featured in two separate campus concerts tonight
and Friday, Nov. 19, in Dinkelspiel Auditorium. Both programs begin
at 8 p.m.

Trombonist Wycliffe Gordon joins the
Stanford Jazz Orchestra tonight for a program of classics from the
Big Band era. Conductor Fred Berry will feature Gordon's
arrangements of tunes by Gershwin and Ellington, among
others.

Gordon is a member of Wynton
Marsalis' Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and toured with his Septet
from 1989 until it disbanded in 1995. He performs throughout the
world and has played with jazz greats Dizzy Gillespie, Nat Adderly,
Lionel Hampton and Shirley Horn. New York Times jazz critic
Peter Watrous calls Gordon's improvisations "effusive . . .
ring[ing] with all the growls and vocalizations that jazz invented
in the first half of the century."

Songs of Milarepa had its
international premiere at the Sagra Musicale Umbra Festival in
Italy in 1997, and subsequently was performed at the Scotia
Festival in May 1999. Milarepa, an 11th-century Tibetan monk, used
spontaneous songs to teach his students an estimated 100,000
spiritual lessons.

"Of course, we have no way of
knowing what the original songs may have sounded like," Glass says.
"However, many poems attributed to Milarepa are available, and it
is from these that my vocal text was fashioned."

Glass arranged the texts in the form
of a common Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the "Three Principles of
the Path," which focus on one's determination to be free and
compassionate and attain ultimate wisdom.

Dvorák's Eighth Symphony
premiered in Prague in 1890, although it originally was written to
be performed in England when he was collaborating with the
Philharmonic Society of London. Dvorák often drew on
Bohemian folklore for artistic inspiration and this selection uses
traditional folk melodies with rhythmic verve and colorful
orchestration.

The Shostakovich Violin Concerto was
first performed by the Leningrad Philharmonic in 1955. David
Oistrackh, the original violinist at that performance, compared the
work to "a Shakespearean role, demanding from the artist the
greatest emotional and intellectual dedicatedness."

The composition is actually Op. 77,
but due to a misprint in Muzgiz in the 1957 edition, it has come to
be known as Op. 99. Student soloist Charlene Chen, a student of St.
Lawrence String Quartet violinist Barry Shiffman, will perform the
challenging work.

Tickets for the Stanford Jazz
Orchestra are $10 general admission and $4 students, and for the
Stanford Symphony Orchestra $8 general admission and $4 students.
Tickets for both concerts are available from the Stanford Ticket
Office, 725-2787, or at the door. SR